Articulāte Volume 14 Article 2 2009 The ysM tery of Sherlock Holmes Ayesha Venkataraman Denison University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.denison.edu/articulate Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Venkataraman, Ayesha (2009) "The ysM tery of Sherlock Holmes," Articulāte: Vol. 14 , Article 2. Available at: http://digitalcommons.denison.edu/articulate/vol14/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Denison Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articulāte by an authorized editor of Denison Digital Commons. The Mystery ofSherlock Holmes Ayesha Venkataraman '09 The marked eccentricity of Sherlock Holmes has been long remarked upon by Holmesian scholars and readers, becoming a trademark of his timeless allure. Simultaneously unsettling and attractive, the peculiarities of Holmes have caused much bemusement, settling as a smoky veil even as the story's mystery is expertly cleared up. Holmes appears rife with contradictions, ordering the world in a Platonic fashion, assuredly finding an objective truth while centralizing himself in a Neitzschean chaos of possibilities. The ease with which he repeatedly unravels the plot of various crimes demonstrates, with infuriating smugness the essential simplicity and predictability of human nature. Yet Sherlock himself slips between our fingers, remaining unpredictable by transgressing the "normative" social, sexual, professional, and gendered boundaries. This seemingly inexplicable queering or refutation of the normative by Sherlock can be better understood, in my opinion, when detection is viewed as a machinery of Foucault's Panopticism. Inspired by Bentham' s prison system, Foucault envisioned a transparent world of continuous supervision from atop a central tower such that those policed are permanently visible, while those policing become obscured so as to remain unverifiable and yet omnipresent. This system would presumably lead to self regulation by the unconscious internalization of this policing. Sherlock's "super-vision," as D.A Miller calls it in clever pun, appears to mirror this idealized panoptic policing, centralizing him while simultaneously necessitating his obscurity (Miller 35). While in an ideal, fully effected Panoptic state, everyone polices themselves, the occurrence of crimes demonstrates the realistic failures of Panopticisrn, and therefore necessitates calling upon the services of the omniscient Sherlock Holmes. Thus it appears that Sherlock's privileged position in the Panopticon allows and even requires his queering, so as to keep him undefined, which effectively serves to undermine the very boundaries and binaries by which he orders society and thereby subvert the soundness of the social order he seeks to uphold. To demonstrate this reading I will use various Holmesian short stories and novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first focusing on Sherlock's omniscient and omnipresent "super-vision" of the characters, demonstrating his alignment with an indefectible policer of the Panopticon. Next, I will outline Sherlock's "normative" ordering of the world, depicting his centrality in the maintenance of a rigidly regulated and patriarchal social order. Finally, I will analyze the contrary queerness of Sherlock, bringing to the fore his paradoxical position of being central to, and peripheral within a society, undermining the boundaries he seeks to uphold. Foucault's conception ofPanopticism is founded upon the idea of complete and constant unilateral visibility of those policed such that it is a "machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference" (Foucault 7 202). In concert with this idea, Sherlock demonstrates his "super-vision" from The final scene of the story truly brings to the fore Sherlock' s "super-vision." the very outset of the story, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," which He willingly unravels the mystery for the benefit of his rather befuddled centers on the investigation of the mysterious death of Julia Stoner. Hired by her companion Dr. Watson, having "come to these conclusions before ever [he] had concerned sister Helen, lest she meet the same fate, Sherlock uses his entered [the killer's] room" (Doyle 237). Thus Sherlock's omniscience and unparalleled powers of penetration upon their first meeting, running "her over centrality to the act of observation are akin to those oftbe policer ofthe with one of his quick, all-comprehensive glances" (Doyle 213). Needing no Panopticon. These powers allow him to apprehend criminals and regulate introduction, Sherlock is able rapidly to make wholly accurate deductions based society with the ease of one before whom society is laid bare. solely on his keen observations, noting nonchalantly that Helen must have Sherlock's omniscience presupposes a great deal of power just as "the arrived by dog-cart for the "left ann of [her] jacket [was] spattered with mud in Panopticon functions as a kind of laboratory of power .. thanks to its no less than seven places ... [and] there is no vehicle save a dog-cart which mechanisms of observation, it gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate throws up mud in that way, and then only when one sits on the left hand side of into men's behavior," with power following the consequent advances of the driver" (Doyle 213). Mirroring the arrangement of prisoners in the knowledge in those policing (Foucault 204). While using his power to regulate Panopticon, in which those " in the peripberic ring [are] totally seen, without crime for the betterment and safety of society, Sherlock appears simultaneously ever seeing" (Foucault 202), those supervised by Sherlock are unable similarly to regulate the normativity of society, carefully upholding its status quo. In this to penetrate his behavior, and are left in the dark with regards to his reasoning story, Sherlock rescues his female client from the murderous clutches ofher and, even more generally, his character. Helen is thus depicted as giving "a father, who wished her ill so as to enable him to keep the property willed to her violent start and star[ing] in bewilderment at Sherlock," being unable to fathom upon her marriage, thus appearing overtly to overturn the patriarchy. This such seemingly impossible astuteness (Doyle 213). But it is precisely because implication of the detective's action, however, is incisively questioned by of his unique astuteness that he is called upon by Helen and multitudinous scholar Jasmine Yong Hall who asks if"Holmes's power [is] really any less others, having heard that be "can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the patriarchal than that ofthe villains in these stories?" (299). In the opening of this human heart" (Doyle 214). Sherlock's singular omniscience is further story, Sherlock appears to be a rather unsung savior of women, giving ear to highlighted, when having beard an incomplete recountal of the case from Helen, Helen Stoner's worries that were flippantly written off by her fiance as "the he exposes "five little livid spots, the marks of four fmgers and thumb, printed fancies of a nervous woman" (Doyle 214). As Hall notes, the story progressively upon [her] white wrist," and thus probes beyond the simple facts (Doyle 220). shifts focus away from Helen towards a fatal battle between Sherlock and her Interestingly, the bedrooms within which the investigation occurs lie adjacent to father, becoming a violent display of machismo. Upon defeating the father and each other with "no communication between them but they all open out into the seemingly establishing his dominance, Sherlock does not liberate Helen by same corridor" (Doyle 217). This architectural design parallels the configuration allowing her unhindered marriage, but rather simply transfers her "from father to of the peripheral ring of rooms opposite the central tower in the Panopticon, husband .. facilitat[ing] the correct exchange of women" (300). Hall further which "impose on [the individual] an axial visibility; but the divisions of the suggests that Helen becomes a "conduit of male power," facilitating a shift of ring, those separated cells, imply a lateral invisibility" (Foucault 200). Upon power from her father to Sherlock (301). The story ends with a nonchalant careful examination of each room with his companion Dr. Watson, Sherlock mention of Helen's untimely death after marriage, which neither Sherlock nor makes key deductions that have escaped the attention of Watson, who Dr. Watson feel the need to look into. This neglect, Hall argues, demonstrates a confusedly remarks that Sherlock had "evidently seen more in these rooms than patriarchal indifference to women (302). Thus, it appears that Sherlock was visible to [him]" (Doyle 231 ). While Sherlock demonstrates a painstaking perpetuates the marginalization and oppression that women like Helen are attention for detail, inspecting even the most seemingly trivial object and forced to bear in a patriarchal society, further exploiting them to gain power crevice, he appears to require none of it, finding a solution long before the while keeping them controlled and contained. Maintaining society's unfounded details align in concurrence. Exclaiming that he "knew that [they] should find a binaries, Sherlock also appears to perpetuate an Orientalist view widely held by ventilator before ever [they] came to [the house]," Sherlock displays his the society of those times. Appearing to hold such views, Helen blames her amazing deductive abilities without